This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (May 2010)

Geraldine Margaret Agnew-Somerville (born 19 May 1967) is an Irish actress^[1] best known for her roles as Detective Sergeant Jane "Panhandle" Penhaligon in Cracker, and Lily Potter in the Harry Potter film series.

Early life[link]

Geraldine Agnew-Somerville was born in County Meath, Ireland, the daughter of Sir Quentin Charles Agnew-Somerville, 2nd Baronet, and Margaret April Irene, Lady Agnew-Somerville (née Drummond), an antiques dealer, but was brought up on the Isle of Man.

Her mother is a daughter of John Drummond, 15th Baron Strange, and sister of the late Cherry Drummond, 16th Baroness Strange.^[2] She has an elder sister, Amelia Rachel (who owns and works in a restaurant with her husband in the Australian rainforest), and a younger brother, James Lockett Charles Agnew-Somerville, who worked in Hong Kong and writes poetry.

Somerville attended dance classes from the age of six, and at eight was sent to the Arts Educational School, a boarding school in Tring, Hertfordshire. There she was taught ballet. She left at sixteen, but continued her studies in London.

Career[link]

Somerville trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1989) in London. She did stage work and appeared on TV in episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Casualty (1993) before landing the role of Penhaligon (or 'Panhandle') in Cracker, which she held from the show's inception in 1993 until its demise in 1995 and became one of the most memorable characters of the series.^[3]

Somerville played Lady Stockbridge in Julian Fellowes's Gosford Park and Harry Potter's mother Lily in some Potter movies. In May 2007, she played author Daphne du Maurier in the BBC TV drama Daphne. She plays a leading role as fictional Louisa, Countess of Manton in the 2012 ITV mini-series Titanic.

Personal life[link]

Somerville married William Osbourne-Young in December 1995 with whom she has three children; her oldest son Casper was born in May 2002, her second son Arthur was born in 2004 and her youngest daughter Rose in 2007.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Geraldine Somerville at the Internet Movie Database

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (June 2010)

Penelope Alice Wilton,^[1] OBE (born 3 June 1946) is an English actress of stage, film and TV. Chiefly famous for starring opposite Richard Briers in the BBC situation comedy Ever Decreasing Circles, she has also appeared in Doctor Who and the period drama Downton Abbey, among many other productions. She has twice won the Critics Circle Theatre Award. Wilton has been married to two distinguished actors, Daniel Massey and Ian Holm.

Life and career[link]

Penelope Alice Wilton was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, the daughter of Alice Travers, a tap dancer and former actress, and Clifford Wilton, a businessman.^[2][3][4] She is a niece of actors Bill Travers and Linden Travers^[5] and a cousin of the actor Richard Morant.^[6] Her maternal grandparents owned theatres.^[4] She and her sisters, Rosemary and Linda, attended the convent school in Newcastle upon Tyne at which their mother had previously taught. Penelope had a successful stage career before breaking into television, and her West End debut was opposite Sir Ralph Richardson.

Her television career began in 1972, playing Vivie Warren in Mrs. Warren's Profession opposite Robert Powell. She then had several major TV roles, including two of the BBC Television Shakespeare productions (as Desdemona in Othello and Regan in King Lear).

Wilton's film career includes roles in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Cry Freedom (1987), Iris (2001), Calendar Girls (2003) and Shaun of the Dead (2004), Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (2005), in Woody Allen's film Match Point (2005) and in The History Boys (2006).

However she did not become a household name until she appeared with Richard Briers in the 1984 BBC situation comedy, Ever Decreasing Circles which ran for five years. In it she played Ann, long suffering wife of Martin (Briers), an obsessive pedant 'do-gooder'. Throughout the run, Ann seeks a more adventurous lifestyle than that offered as a pillar of the community, and mildly flirts with their considerably more charismatic neighbour Paul (Peter Egan) but ultimately she remains faithful to Martin.^{[citation needed]}

Between 1975 and 1984 she was married to the actor Daniel Massey. Wilton and Massey had a daughter, Alice, born in 1977.^[7] Between 1991 and 2001 she was married to Sir Ian Holm (and in 1998 after he was knighted she became Lady Holm) and they appeared together as Pod and Homily in the BBC's 1993 adaptation of The Borrowers.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005 Wilton guest starred as Harriet Jones, MP for two episodes in the BBC's revival of the popular TV science-fiction series Doctor Who. This guest role was written especially for her by the programme's chief writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies, with whom she had previously worked on Bob and Rose (ITV, 2001). The character of Jones returned as Prime Minister in "The Christmas Invasion", the Doctor Who 2005 Christmas special. In the first part of the 2008 series finale, The Stolen Earth, she made a final appearance, now as the former Prime Minister who sacrifices herself to the Daleks so that the Doctor's companions can contact him. She appeared in four episodes overall.

Wilton has also appeared on television as Barbara Poole, the mother of a missing woman, in the BBC television drama series Five Days in 2005; and in ITV's drama Half Broken Things (October 2007) and the BBC production of The Passion (Easter 2008). In 2010 and 2011, she appeared as Isobel Crawley in the first and second series of the hit period drama Downton Abbey. She was the castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in April 2008.

Awards and recognition[link]

She has twice won the Critics Circle Theatre Award – in 1981 for her performance in Much Ado About Nothing, and in 1993 for The Deep Blue Sea. In 2001 she was nominated for the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for her performance in The Little Foxes at the Donmar Warehouse. In 2004 she was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to drama.

Filmography[link]

Stage[link]

Penelope Wilton commenced her professional career at the Nottingham Playhouse, and famously appeared alongside Nicholas Clay in The Dandy Lion. She was Regan to Michael Hordern's King Lear at Nottingham Playhouse in 1970; Anna Calder-Marshall played Cordelia, and Thelma Ruby was the elder sister, Goneril.

• Mary, West of Suez, Royal Court Theatre, London, 1971.
• Araminta, The Philanthropist, Royal Court Theatre, then Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York City, 1971.
• Maud, The Great Exhibition, Hampstead Theatre Club, London, 1972.
• Sophia, The Director of the Opera, Chichester Festival, Chichester, England, 1973.
• Masha, The Seagull, Chichester Festival, 1973.
• Dikson, Something's Burning, Mermaid Theatre, London, 1974.
• Ruth, The Norman Conquests, Greenwich Theatre, London, 1974.
• Dora Carrington, Bloomsbury, Phoenix Theatre, London, 1974.
• Isabella, Measure For Measure, Greenwich Theatre, London, 1975.
• Second woman, "Play," Play and Others, Royal Court Theatre, 1976.
• Prudence Malone, Plunder, National Theatre Company, Lyttelton Theatre, London, 1978.
• Julia Craven, The Philanderer, National Theatre Company, Lyttelton Theatre, 1978.
• Emma, Betrayal, National Theatre Company, Lyttelton Theatre, 1978.
• Barbara, Tishoo, Wyndham's Theatre, London, 1979.
• Ann Whitefield and Dona Ana, Man and Superman, National Theatre Company, Olivier Theatre, London, 1981.
• Beatrice, Much Ado about Nothing, National Theatre Company, Olivier Theatre, 1981.
• Barbara Undershaft, Major Barbara, National Theatre Company, Lyttelton Theatre, 1982.
• Marion French, The Secret Rapture, National Theatre Company, Lyttelton Theatre, 1988.
• Hermione, Andromache, Old Vic Theatre, London, 1988.
• Piano, National Theatre Company, Cottesloe Theatre, London, 1990.
• Deborah, A Kind of Alaska, The Collection, and The Lover, Donmar Warehouse, London, 1999.
• Arkadina, The Seagull, Barbican Theatre, London, 2000.
• Regina, Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes, Donmar Warehouse, October 2001.
• Sonya, Afterplay play by Brian Friel, Gielgud Theatre, London, England, UK/ Gate Theatre, Dublin, September 2002.
• Bernada, Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, National Theatre Lyttelton, March 2005.
• Female voice, Samuel Beckett's Eh Joe at the Gate Theatre, Dublin and the Duke of York's in the West End. 2006.
• Livia, Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women at the Swan Theatre, Stratford, for the RSC, February 2006.
• Ella Rentheim, Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Donmar Warehouse, February 2007.
• Agatha, The Family Reunion, Donmar Warehouse, London, 2008.
• Gertude, Hamlet, Donmar Warehouse's West End season – Wyndham's Theatre, London, 2009.
• Agnes, A Delicate Balance, Almeida Theatre, London - 2011.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Penelope Wilton at the Internet Movie Database
• Penelope Wilton at the Internet Broadway Database
• Gareth McLean, Unspoken worlds, 25 October 2007, The Guardian
• Ancestry of Penelope Wilton

Elizabeth McGovern
Elizabeth McGovern at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival
Born	(1961-07-18) July 18, 1961 (age 50) Evanston, Illinois, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1979–present
Spouse	Simon Curtis (1992–present)

Elizabeth McGovern (born July 18, 1961) is an American film, television and theater actress, and a musician.

Early life[link]

McGovern was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Katharine Wolcott (née Watts), a high school teacher, and William Montgomery McGovern, Jr., a university professor.^[1][2] Her paternal grandfather was adventurer William Montgomery McGovern and her maternal great-grandfather was U.S. diplomat Ethelbert Watts.^[3][4] The McGovern family moved to Los Angeles where her father accepted a teaching position with the law school at UCLA. Her younger sister is novelist Cammie McGovern.

McGovern started acting in plays while attending The Oakwood School in North Hollywood.^{[citation needed]} Agent Joan Scott saw her performance in The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder, was impressed by her talent, and recommended she take acting lessons.^{[citation needed]} McGovern studied at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, then at The Juilliard School in New York City.^[5]

Career[link]

In 1980, while studying at Juilliard, McGovern was offered a part in her first film, Ordinary People, in which she played the girlfriend of troubled teenager Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton).

The following year she completed her education as an actress at the American Conservatory Theatre and at The Juilliard School, and began to appear in plays, first Off-Broadway and later in famous theaters.

In 1981, she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Evelyn Nesbit in the film Ragtime.^[6]

In 1984, she starred in Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America as Robert De Niro's romantic interest, Deborah Gelly. In 1989, she played Mickey Rourke's girlfriend in Johnny Handsome, directed by Walter Hill, and the same year she appeared as a rebellious lesbian in Volker Schlöndorff's thriller The Handmaid's Tale.

Television[link]

McGovern has also appeared in several television productions, mostly in England.

In 1999 and 2000, McGovern played Marguerite St. Just in a BBC television series loosely based on the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel.

In May 2007, she played Ellen Doubleday, Daphne du Maurier's paramour, in Daphne, a BBC2 television drama by Amy Jenkins, based on Margaret Forster's biography of the author.^[7]

In December 2008, McGovern appeared in an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot in the episode "Appointment with Death" and played Dame Celia Westholme.

In the same year, she appeared in the three-part BBC comedy series Freezing, written by James Wood and directed and co-produced by her husband Simon Curtis. First broadcast on BBC Four, it received a further three consecutive evening transmissions on BBC2 in February 2008. In it she played an American expatriate actress named Elizabeth, living in Chiswick with her publisher husband, played by Hugh Bonneville, and co-starring Tom Hollander as her theatrical agent.

In 2010, she played a leading role as Cora, Countess of Grantham in the British TV series Downton Abbey.^[8] A second series aired in 2011, and a third is planned for 2012.

On American TV she appeared in a 2006 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit titled "Harm," in which her character of Dr. Faith Sutton was a psychiatrist accused of complicity in detainee abuse. Her other television work includes Broken Glass (Arthur Miller, 1996); Tales from the Crypt; The Changeling; Tales from Hollywood; the HBO series Men and Women; The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt; Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre ("Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"); and If Not For You (CBS 1995, own series).

Music[link]

McGovern is also a singer-songwriter. In 2008, she began fronting the band Sadie and the Hotheads at The Castle pub venue in Portobello Road, London.^{[citation needed]} The band released an album of songs she had developed with The Nelson Brothers, who are now part of the band. The album also includes Ron Knights on bass and Rowan Oliver, borrowed from Goldfrapp, as drummer for the recording sessions.^[6] Michelle Dockery, who plays McGovern's eldest daughter in Downton Abbey, has occasionally sung with the band.^[9]

Theatre[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (May 2012)

Roles in New York include:

• Melissa Gardner in Love Letters (A R Gurney) at the Edison Theatre, October 1989
• Ophelia in Hamlet with the Roundabout Theater Company at the Criterion Center Stage Right, April 1992.

In her theatre programme CVs (below), McGovern lists her other theatre work in the US as including:

• My Sister in This House (Wendy Kesselman)
• Painting Churches (Tina Howe)
• The Hitch-Hiker
• A Map of the World (David Hare)
• Aunt Dan and Lemon (Wallace Shawn)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Winter 1987
• When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout (Sharman McDonald)
• Maids of Honour
• Three Sisters (Chekhov)
• As You Like It

Since moving to London, McGovern's stage work has included:

• Jenny in The Misanthrope (Molière freely adapted by Martin Crimp) at the Young Vic Theatre, February 1996
• Darlene in Hurlyburly (David Rabe) at the Old Vic Theatre, March 1997
• Nan and Lina in Three Days of Rain (Richard Greenberg) at the Donmar Warehouse, March and November 1999
• Beth in Dinner With Friends (Donald Margulies) at the Hampstead Theatre, June 2001
• Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne adapted by Phyllis Nagy) at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester August 2005
• Judith Brown in Complicit by Joe Sutton in The Old Vic, January 2009.
• Miss A in The Shawl by David Mamet in the Arcola Theatre, September 2009.

Personal life[link]

McGovern was engaged to actor Sean Penn. They were engaged when she was 23, and met on the set of Racing with the Moon. She married British film director and producer Simon Curtis in 1992, and the couple have two children.^[10][11]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

• Theatre Record and its annual Indexes

External links[link]

• Elizabeth McGovern at the Internet Movie Database
• Elizabeth McGovern at the Internet Broadway Database

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (July 2011)

Patrick Albert Crispin Marber (born 19 September 1964)^[1] is an English comedian, playwright,^[2] director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter.

Early life and education[link]

Marber was born in London, England, the son of Brian Marber, a leading and highly-regarded technical analyst, and was raised in Wimbledon. He was educated at St Paul's School, Cranleigh School and Wadham College, Oxford.

Career[link]

After working for a few years as a stand-up comedian, Marber was a writer and cast member on the radio shows On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You, and their television spinoffs The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. Amongst other roles, Marber portrayed the hapless reporter Peter O'Hanrahahanrahan in both On the Hour and The Day Today, and was involved in a dispute with the comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, who had written for On the Hour, about who had invented the character. Lee and Herring's TV show Fist of Fun would later make several references to their ongoing feud with Marber, calling him a "Cornish playwright" and "Cornish curmudgeon". In Stewart Lee's 2010 book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Marber is referred to as a "new Shakespeare".

Marber reunited with the Knowing Me, Knowing You team in 2003 to record commentaries for the DVD release of the show. He also contributed some new in-character audio material to the DVD release of The Day Today in 2004. His first play was Dealer's Choice, which he also directed. Set in a restaurant and based around a game of poker (and partly inspired by his own experiences with gambling addiction), it opened at the National Theatre in February 1995, and won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy.

After Miss Julie, a version of the Strindberg play Miss Julie, was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this, Marber moves the action to Britain in 1945, at the time of the Labour Party's victory in the general election, with Miss Julie as the daughter of a Labour peer. A stage version, directed by Michael Grandage, was first performed 2003 at the Donmar Warehouse, London by Kelly Reilly, Richard Coyle and Helen Baxendale. It later had a production at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway in 2009.

His play Closer, a comedy of sex, dishonesty and betrayal, opened at the National Theatre in 1997, again directed by Marber. This too won the Evening Standard award for Best Comedy, as well as the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Laurence Olivier awards for Best New Play. It has proved to be an international success, having been translated into thirty languages. A screen adaptation, written by Marber, was released in 2004, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen.

In Howard Katz, his next play, Marber presented very different subject matter: a middle-aged man struggling with life, death and religion. This was first performed in 2001, again at the National Theatre, but was less favourably received by the critics and has been less of a commercial success than some of his other work. A new production by the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Off-Broadway in March 2007, with Alfred Molina in the title role. A play for young people, The Musicians, about a school orchestra's visit to Russia, was performed for the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme in 2004, its first production being at the Sydney Opera House.

Don Juan in Soho, his contemporary rendering of Molière's comedy Don Juan, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, directed by Michael Grandage and with Rhys Ifans in the lead role.

He also co-wrote the screenplay for Asylum (2005), directed by David Mackenzie, and was sole screenwriter for the film Notes on a Scandal (2006), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Marber's theatre directing credits include Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter (National Theatre), The Old Neighbourhood by David Mamet, (Royal Court Theatre, London) and The Caretaker by Harold Pinter, (Comedy Theatre, London).

In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.

Marber is a Director of Lewes FC, driving forward a scheme for the club to be community owned since July 2010.

Personal life[link]

Since 2002, Marber has been married to actress Debra Gillett. They now have three children.

Work[link]